I want to tell you a story.
It is 2018, and I am a recent college graduate.
I’m 23 years old. My high school best friend and I decide to take a little trip to Montreal. We’ve never been. It seems like a really fun idea. She knows French. It felt like a cool thing to do. And we’re in New York City, so it’s a short flight.
We get on the plane early in the morning. It’s a very full flight. Boarding was hectic. I remember it being really hard to get our overhead storage and throw things in. Whatever, it was a short flight.
We arrive in Montreal, and it’s still very early. Maybe 8 AM. We get to customs, and we’re about to show our passports to the gate person.
And I can’t find mine. I can’t find my passport.
And I know I have it, because I wouldn’t have been allowed on the plane without it. They checked our passports coming into the airport in New York, and then again at the gate. I know I have it. I got on the plane with this passport. I know that.
But I don’t have it now. I don’t have my passport.
I’ll remind you again that it is 2018 and I am an African American woman.
Trump had just been elected during the fall semester of my senior year at Vassar, which I wrote about here.
It’s 2018, and we are two years into Trump’s first administration and I am an African American woman in a different country than I was born in without my passport.
I am losing my shit. I am having what I now know is a panic attack.
My friend, thankfully, was able to keep it together and made sure that I had WhatsApp installed on my phone so that we could communicate after she went through customs and I went back to the plane to look for my passport.
I don’t even really remember the gate number where we got deplaned, but I’m just sprinting through the airport with my carry-on, and I’m probably crying at this point, too.
When I finally find the gate, I’m told that they’ve searched and cleaned the plane. I can’t go look myself.
And now I’m really freaking out.
I’m walking back when an airport worker comes by with one of those big carts—the ones for luggage or people with disabilities. He offers me a ride back to customs.
I’m a sweaty, bawling mess.
I keep chanting, “They’re going to deport me. They’re going to deport me. I don’t have a passport—they’re going to deport me.”
This very kind Canadian airport worker asks, “Where are you from?”
“New York.”“So, why would we deport you? Where would we deport you?” “Africa, obviously.“Huh??”
He tells me his daughter lives in New York. He’s trying to distract me because I’m hysterical, and he’s doing his best to just be this gentle, lovely Canadian man. It works, but only a little bit.
When I get back to customs, my friend is waiting for me. I’m given a slip of paper and sent to the customs office to sort things out.
At the office, they ask me questions. Everything is above board, all in public—I’m not taken into any backrooms, thankfully. I’m sent to the help desk to see if my passport has turned up.
We haven’t even gotten our luggage yet—we’re just running around looking for my passport.
And do you know what the guy at the desk says, when I give him my name?
“Oh, there you are! Yeah, we found it. We tried to call you. You didn’t answer. Here it is.”
They’d found it while cleaning the plane and had been calling me ever since. But I hadn’t answered because I was running around convinced I was about to be deported.
It was the best moment of my life.
In the same breath, the guy says, “The baggage is still coming out. They might have lost some of the bags.”
I couldn’t have cared less about my bags. They could’ve thrown my bags in the ocean for all I care.
The trip was lovely. It was also freezing. But lovely. And on the flight back to New York a couple of days later, I practically caressed my passport the entire time.
I used to joke that the moral of this story is: if you’re going to lose your passport, do it in Canada because they’re very nice.
And yet now on January 98th, 2026, I’m just as afraid of being kidnapped and sent away to God knows where when I’m taking the subway, in the city where I was born.
I woke up to a text from a friend that essentially said “If you don’t want to see the shit storm going on, don’t check social media.” And I was like, yeah, no shit. So I checked.
Don Lemon has been arrested, along with Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy.
That hit really hard. I’m afraid for all of them. I’m afraid for Don, as a Black gay man. I’m scared for all of the journalists, out there.
I’m scared for Liam Ramos.
I’m scared for the families who have watched their loved ones be killed.
And.
I’m finally afraid for myself.
I feel relatively safe in the confines of my neighborhood. I lull myself to sleep with the false promise of safety that a double-locked door, a doorman, and an elite zip code provide.
I try not to think about what would happen if I got kidnapped while babysitting. But I do.
I think about whether or not the child in my care would understand the gravity of the situation. I wonder if I’d convince him to run, or just pick him up.
I mostly fear what would happen if ICE took me, and left him alone on the streets of New York, or even in the subway. A child with no wallet, no phone, who has just watched his babysitter get kidnapped, would be tasked with finding his own way home.
As chilling as this scenario is, it’s far better than the one where they keep us together, and take us both. I have hope that a kind stranger would help him find his way home. I trust strangers far more than the monsters pretending that they’re protecting us, aka ICE.
I think about what kind of facility I’d be taken to. I wonder how long I could survive without food and water, instead of forcing myself to eat food with worms and all other kinds of debris in it.
I wonder if I would be able to interact with the children separated from their parents, and cuddle them close.
I wonder if my kidnapping would cause public outcry. I wonder how long it would take for people to know that I was gone.
I wonder if I’d be released before my 31st birthday. I wonder if they have calendars in those detention centers.
I wonder if I’d be physically and sexually abused, or if the guards would just stick to verbal, emotional, and racial abuse.
I wonder how many times I’d be called the n word before lunch.
Maybe I’d die of frostbite, laying on a cold, damp floor somewhere.
Maybe I’d stain myself with my menstrual blood, and be told to take a Tylenol.
Maybe I’d dissociate and drift off somewhere far away to ease the pain.
Maybe I’d replay Heated Rivalry on loop in my head.
And hum ‘No Place Like Home’ and the soundtrack of Ragtime.
Would my ancestors be with me? Would they come to me in some way, to help me through?
If I’m kidnapped wearing the beaded bracelet made to remember my Aunt Eileen by, would they let me keep it? Or take it, like they took Liam Ramos’ bunny hat?
Would they rip the beads off my wrist, just for fun? And laugh as I cried?
I wear one that says “worthy.” I think about getting that word tattooed on my risk one day, to remind myself of my worth.
Will I forget my worth, in the company of people who think of me as 3/5 of a human being?
The same “men” who parade around kidnapping people, were probably inspired by the texts sent to black women in the days after the 2024 election, stating that we’d been selected for cotton picking shifts.
I watched The Handmaid’s Tale for a week after the 2024 election. I told myself I was preparing myself for what was to come.
Wasn’t I?
I recently saw a quote that said something like “the worst kind of slavery is…” and the answer was something like the prison of your mind or something.
And I thought to myself, well isn’t the worst kind of slavery, slavery?
Plantations. Concentration Camps. Detention Centers.
ICE officers are rounding up anyone and everyone, like slave catchers in Africa.
I never watched the movie “12 years a slave” but I saw many clips.
I did read all of the Addy books, during my American girl doll obsession as a child.
In the first few chapters, Addy is beside herself when her mother tells her that they’ll be leaving her little sister Esther behind because it wouldn’t be possible to escape with a baby. They weren’t reunited with her until six books later. Addy’s brother and father also found the family — a “happy” ending, and somewhat of a fairytale.
I’m watching my friends, people, and really the world—move around. We’re in this state of collective shock and terror. And I’m thinking, aren’t you so scared?
I think we are. I know I am.
I couldn’t find the energy to wash my hair today, so I decided to do my laundry and wash my dishes instead.
I’m excited to see my hair braider next week. But if she called me and said she wasn’t feeling safe coming in or being in public, I would understand that too.
I want to go to yoga class and be scared and still have joy. I want to not be afraid to take the subway. I want to go to a theater and support my friends. I want to call my reps and then go get groceries for chili.
I want to not open the news. I want to have five seconds of peace before I wake up and before I go to bed—scrolling and watching videos of ICE brutality.
I want to take care of my mental health without feeling like I’m betraying other people. Because if I were in custody, I would want people doing everything they could to get me out. But I would also want them to have their sanity.
And I also want to have my sanity.
I know I can’t be of use to anyone if I’m not taking care of myself too. And if I sit here and don’t eat, or do my laundry, or wash my hair, then I can’t keep fighting and calling my reps and showing up.
It’s really scary to admit all of this. But I have to. For me, and for you.
I always say—and I will say it until my dying day, chilling as it is to say that right now—if anything I put into the world gives one person a moment of “wow, me too,” (which I know my work has) then I’m good. I’ve done that. I’m deeply grateful for that.
So for anyone reading this who is scared, who hasn’t been able to name that fear, who is waking up every day thinking, What are we doing? How am I doing this? How am I just living through this?
This is for you. I’m right here with you. Every second of every day, I’m right here with you.
Friends of Don Lemon were on his Instagram, talking about what’s going on and keeping people informed, and someone said something like: the road to freedom can be slow, but it continues.
That’s horribly paraphrased. But I do believe this will not be what life is like for the rest of our lives.
I believe my children and my grandchildren will one day look at me and say, wow, you lived through that—the same way I look at people older than me now. I wish it stopped there, and that I wouldn’t be one of the people telling those stories to my grandchildren, but alas.
I think it’s helpful to imagine a time when it won’t be like this. And also to do everything we can. And also to keep breathing, taking care of ourselves, drinking the coffee, washing the laundry, laughing, and holding onto our sanity as part of that work.
We are all doing the best we can.
I was really terrified late the other night, and I went into Sephora to get a hair mask. (I use Tracee Ellis Ross, Patten products—they’re amazing.) There was a Black women working, and we were looking at serums, and at some point I mentioned my age.
She goes, “I thought you were like 21,” and I was like, oh my God, I love you, thank you.”
We had this moment of exchanging eye creams and talking, and it was really beautiful and really sweet.
I just hope we can keep showing up for each other in the fullness of who we are.
Call your reps. Cry it out. Tell your friends you’re scared. Tell me if you want—email me. I’m here for you. My inbox is open. Support people you love. Support small businesses.
And fuck ICE.
And I love you all so much. Thank you for holding space for all of this today. I really hope that the mission of this rings true—that my vulnerability has been a permission slip for yours.
There is no blueprint. There is no map. There is no guide for surviving fascism in 2026. We are still in the first month of this godforsaken year. And if you’re listening to this, you are here. And you are doing your best.
I hope we all keep doing that all the way home.
I’m going to take my coffee, get my clothes from the dryer, maybe call my reps, check in on what’s going on—and also take a screen break, because God, I’m rambling.
Before I go: shoutout to Brittany Packnett Cunningham, who I love. She did an episode with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach on We Can Do Hard Things—about what’s going on in Minnesota and with ICE more broadly. I haven’t listened yet, but I know it’s an amazing conversation. Brittany is someone I always look to for the pulse of what’s happening and for actionable things I can do. And thank you to Glennon for using her platform to uplift the helpers and fighters.
That’s it. I’m signing off.
I love you all so much. Please take care of yourselves. Protect your people. And protecting your people includes yourself, right? We can’t want peace and safety for everyone if it doesn’t include us.
I want it for you.I want it for me
For all of us.
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